BBC News - Anti-cyber threat centre launched

[Ian Batten]

On 27 Mar 2013, at 14:12, Roland Perry <lists at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:

> In article <F6FD81DC-6A74-48F8-B3D0-F56C23E01C9B at batten.eu.org>, Ian Batten <igb at batten.eu.org> writes
>> What about the claim of large off-the-books losses?  Well, there's a vague suggestion of that:
>> 
>> One major London listed company had incurred revenue losses of £800m as a result of cyber attack from a hostile state because of commercial disadvantage in contractual negotiations.
>> 
>> Translation: they bid for a contract with a total contract value of £800m and lost to a foreign company.  Well, there's a million and one reasons why that could happen, starting with your price being too high or your delivery schedule being too slow, and ending with your salesman committing some terrible faux-pas over dinner.  It's impossible to ascribe one explanation, but obviously "it was shadowy hackers that lost us the business" is a very easy excuse for everyone involved
> 
> A hacking scenario could be that competitors got sight of the internal bid papers and crucially managed to use that to their advantage in the late stages of the bid.

Obviously.  But proving that was the only, or even an influential, factor that caused you to lose the business would be very difficult.  They might not have liked the cut of your jib.

ian